“It’s sad.”

“It is.”

“What’s sad,” I asked, leaning into a co-workers’ conversation.

Two teenagers died on Lake Minnetonka. They were boyfriend-girlfriend. They were in love. They were so young.

“Like Romeo and Juliet.”

“It’s such a shame.”

“How did it happen,” I asked.

“They fell through the ice.”

“Were they skating?”

“No, they were in their car.”

“In their car?”

“Yes.”

“Driving?”

“Yes.”

“On the ice?”

Lake Minnetonka is a collection of bays connected by channels that never fully freeze, which means the lake never fully freezes, which reminded me of a prior incident on the same lake involving another winter sport: driving a snowmobile across an open body of water.

I’ve been told if you keep a high rate of speed, you can move a snowmobile from frozen ice to open water back to frozen ice. The snowmobile doesn’t even know that it’s no longer on ice. That’s unless it stops.

This time it wasn’t Romeo, Juliet and a submerged Camaro. It was a snowmobiler who couldn’t quite make the turn when he tried to move from one frozen lake to another via an unfrozen channel. Instead, he bounced off a concrete embankment and immediately sank. Fortunately, a homeowner heard the crash and fished him out. Unfortunately, the snowmobiler was going to spend the rest of his days in a nursing home.

I don’t understand these winter activities. Life is already a dangerous assignment. Why taunt fate by driving a car on a frozen lake or skipping a snowmobile over a body of water? What causes people to make such poor decisions? There are plenty of reasons. I can think of three.

#1 NOT BEING SMART

Being an idiot is not conducive to long-term survival. Take me for example.

For a time I had a habit of putting on my seatbelt when in traffic. Not before I started the car. Not before I put the car in gear. Not before I drove down the block. But when I was in the thick of it and my eyes told my brain: “Sure looks like a lot of traffic.”

Then, and only then, did I fumble for the safety belt.

To this day I don’t know why I performed this idiotic ritual, but I’m not the only one who has committed a vehicular sin, yet, there is one that I find hard to fathom – texting. You’ve seen it. I’ve seen it. A car slightly drifting into your lane with the driver completely unaware because the head is down reading an incoming message.

:O

#2 LACK OF SLEEP

You may be the smartest person in the room, but you’ll never be able to prove it if you stay up all night. The body needs sleep so the brain can rest. And if a person is too stubborn to take a nap, the brain will take over.

Do you ever have those moments when you walk into a room and you don’t know why? That’s because your brain shut off. If you can’t remember your kid’s name, it’s not because you don’t know the name. Your brain took a pause. That’s why common sense will leave a person the more tired he or she gets. It should be the opposite. Any action about to be taken in the midst of weary fog should be predetermined. So…

When it comes to a long drive on the open road and your eyes begin to droop, you will:

(a) pull over at the next truck stop and grab a quick nap instead of
(b) take a quick nap and let the car find the nearest truck stop.

When it comes to a long day and the sandman is ready to tuck you in, you will:

(a) send your kids to their room and put them in bed instead of
(b) falling asleep on the couch, giving your kids free reign of the house with crayons, markers and whatever paint supplies they find.

When nodding off while doing your taxes, you will:

(a) carefully gather all of your receipts and forms and put them in a safe place for the next day instead of
(b) accidentally claiming the residents of Micronesia as dependents, then asking the State Department for a $13,000,000.00 refund.

When handling contract negotiations as a union rep going into the midnight hour, you will:

(a) break off the talks to get some needed rest instead of
(b) giving into management’s demands that Tuesday be known as “Volunteer Day”.

#3 ALCOHOL

Isn’t it ironic that the most avoidable can also be the most dangerous? No one should slam five shots of Wild Turkey before making an important decision. I’m sure we’ve all had our moments where the worst decisions we ever made were under the bleary haze of booze. I remember one such incident, working a summer job at an amusement park.

It wasn’t as exciting as it sounds. The rides were as thrilling as a carwash; the grand prizes at the midway were stuffed chinchillas; the concession stands had week-old popcorn; the picnic grounds were patches of dirt, and the beer garden was a concrete patio. The park did have a nice swimming pool molded like a small lake with a sandy shore. The ballroom was also nice. But by far the best part of working there was the catering. The head cook was a former Army cook. He even maintained a buzz-cut and kept an unlit cigar in his mouth. He was the General McArthur of fried chicken and his chicken was unbelievable. The aroma permeated my summer days as I switched out empty canisters of soda and kegs of beer in the ballroom and picnic grounds. That was my job. To restock the bar, which became an endless, ongoing assignment during the busiest day of the year.

It was the Fourth of July and I was working a company picnic. I don’t remember the name of the business. I know it had an acronym like DAKO. I remember the business hung their huge logo in the beer garden in case any of the employees forgot where they worked. And there were a lot of employees. Hundreds of employees with friends and family. It was a massive bacchanalia and we couldn’t keep up with the demand as people stood in lines to grab chicken, potato salad, a slice of watermelon or cold beer, lots of beer, a truckload of beer. There was a refrigerated truck in the parking lot filled with kegs. So back and forth I went from the beer garden to the truck as the bartenders kept the spouts open and shouted for me to get another keg for the one I tapped would be empty in minutes.

By chance I temped at DAKO earlier in the summer. I reported to the main processing center where credit card statements were collated with advertisements, return envelopes, stuffed into an envelope, stamped and sealed, then mailed to those who did not want to open them.

The work area was expansive, filled with a sea of collating machines manned by people with the simple task of loading the statements, advertisements and envelopes. It was that simple. The parameters of the machine were set by a technician. All the line workers had to do was make sure the machines did not jam. And if they did, that’s where I came in.

I sat at a long, wooden table that overlooked the expansive room and waited for crunched-up credit card statements to be put in front of me. My job was to manually stuff the statements that could no longer go through the machines.

If you are bored and still living in the 80’s, take a closer look at your credit card statement. In the margins in very fine print is a group of numbers or letters like 4DW-79A. This random grouping is used to match credit card statements with the corresponding envelopes.

That was my job: to take the crumbled credit card statements, find the group of numbers and letters in the margins, then turn around and find the corresponding envelopes in one of the hundreds of cubby holes that were stacked higher than the Berlin Wall.

That was it. And after I manually stuffed the envelopes and sent them on their way, I had time to cast a long gaze across the room and see employees using about 3% of their brains. And as I gazed across a sweaty sea of DAKO employees in the beer garden, I felt a few of them might be getting blitzed on domestic beer.

Free pour! Just the idea of having one at a company picnic sounds so antiquated. Nowadays management is so afraid of a lawsuit they won’t even serve solid food at a Christmas dinner. The thought of free alcohol at a company-sponsored picnic is the equivalent of giving kindergartners fireworks at recess. What was the company thinking? Well, they weren’t. It was the 80’s, a time when the mere act of stupidity could be turned into a financial windfall. A time before warning labels. A time before…

Poured hot coffee all over your lap?
Maybe don’t put a hot drink in your lap.

Fell off a ladder?
That top step isn’t a step.

Electrocuted yourself with a toaster oven?
Maybe you should have unplugged it before washing it in the sink.

Broke your leg skateboarding?
If the skateboard goes into the air, it may come down.

The gorilla at the zoo mauled your boyfriend?
Maybe the gorilla didn’t want to pose with him for some zany photo.

Free pour! Even though I’m a fan of both words, the thought of putting them together at a company picnic was a potential debacle. For no matter how responsible 99.5% of the employees are, there will always be that one person who has the common sense of a snail; a person who will try to pass as much light beer through his bladder as humanly possible; a person completely unhinged from any rational thought, moral compass or social decorum; a person who will create some magnificent blunder that will be a source of discussion at work the next day and many thereafter.

Free pour! The beer was flowing and the employees of DAKO were starting to lower their guardrails. Labor started socializing with management and management allowed it to happen. Labor kept telling management what they really thought about them and management told labor they could really care less. Labor respected management’s honesty and everybody had another round of beer.

Then gossip…

What were Davin and Chandra doing on their lunch break?

Is Peter really on probation?

Who keeps stealing Linda’s lasagna?

How old are the Fig Newton’s in the vending machine?

Secrets were being revealed, stories exaggerated, insults exchanged, marriages tested, promotions lost, then a cover band arrived and kicked everything into overdrive.

I wanted the day to be over, but there was no reason for the park to shut down. Too much money was to be made and the park was prepared to keep the beer garden open until the Fifth of July if that meant selling every keg of beer in that refrigerated truck.

By the time the cover band launched into “Panama”, most of the families had left. And what was once a company picnic soon turned into a free-for-all as people from all over the park migrated into the beer garden. Even some of the park employees took off their uniforms and joined the fun. It was fun. Everybody was partying except for one.

After tossing another empty keg into the truck, I decided to wander through the park. I needed a break. But as I headed towards the entrance of the midway, I saw a manager running past. It was odd to see a manager, let alone one running, and the unusual moment turned confusing when the manager by-passed the midway entrance to jump over a ten-foot fence that hemmed the amusement rides.

I kept walking towards the entrance until I saw a couple of co-workers coming from the midway.

“What’s going on,” I asked.

“You don’t want to go in there.”

“Why?”

“Some guy fell off one of the rides.”

It was one of the more exciting rides for not only did it spin people in a two-person cab, it also shot that cab some thirty-feet into the air, round and round, the ride spun and thrust like a multi-winged mechanical bird trying to take flight. And the only thing that kept people in their seats was an iron bar clamped tightly across their laps. It was a perfectly safe ride for those who remained seated. It was not a safe ride if a person wiggled out of the bar to stand and shout to the world: “I’m the king of DAKO!!!”

The ride operator said the DAKO employee was belligerent when he climbed into the cab. He ignored the operator’s pleas to stay seated, then launched himself some fifty feet into the air.

Unfortunately, he came down.

Fortunately, he didn’t land on anyone else.

That same weekend a lifeguard fished a toddler out of the park’s crowded pool. With decisive action, he saved the little one and prevented another tragedy. Still, a somber note hung over the park for a couple weeks until the news coverage subsided and investigations ceased. The ride was allowed to reopen for it was determined there was nothing wrong with it. So people climbed into the cabs, the mechanical wings took flight and the park returned to some semblance of normality. But it was not quite the same. Someone launched himself and like Icarus his descent proved fatal. So a nickname for the ride started to pass from employee to employee until it reached me in the beer garden: The Flying Bob.

FINAL NOTE

Someone recently asked me if I knew how Harrison Ford got the iconic scar on his chin. I didn’t. So exhaustive research led me to the academic journal, People Magazine, in which it was reported that Ford got the scar from a car accident. Seems he was late for work and ran into a telephone pole while trying to put on his seatbelt.

I may be an idiot, but at least I never crashed into a telephone pole while fumbling for my seatbelt. I also never starred in two blockbuster movie franchises. So Ford has me there.